Loki traversed the cold streets back to that dilapidated building her son called a bar, her visage as Lora and a black three-piece suit donned beneath a dark green overcoat. The streets were practically deserted compared to the last time she visited, and the few stragglers that lingered near the entrance of the establishment were quick to scramble out of her way.

At least they had come to learn that valuable lesson.

Immediately upon stepping into the red light of the short hallway, her ears filled with incessant chatter. No, it was nowhere near the likes of the endearing ramblings of her dear heart, but more the incoherence of a madman in dire need of a muzzle.

She stepped into the core of the building and noted that the place was practically barren, the chairs stacked and the long sticks that were normally held over fuzzy green tables were lined up along the back wall in some semblance of an orderly fashion. The floor was swept, though somehow managed to maintain some of its notable grime, and there was still that tinge of ale and smoke lingerings that permeated the air. The barman—Weasel—tinkered with one of the electronics behind the long stretch of wood, and she spied the source of clanging vocal chords to be a man dressed in a red and black suit covering the entirety of his countenance.

"I just don't see the merit of there being a height limit on train-shaped roller coasters," the red man whined. "If I'm coming for Thomas the Spank Tank, I'm getting Thomas the Spank Tank—"

"If this is the conversation where I learn that you've secretly had a fetish for wanting to bone trains, I want to leave."

"I'm not saying I would like to fuck this blue train, but I do understand why people want to fuck this blue train. But we're getting off topic." He flapped a gloved hand. "I'm absolutely positively sure I can fit into one of those cargo-cart-seat-majigs."

"Your back would snap like a fucking folding chair."

"You don't know that."

"I do know that. You know why I know that? I know that because I've seen your bones twist like a bendy straw when Professor X's thicc transformer went and—"

"God, I would climb that hunk like a tree."

"Alright Wade 'Whack-Off' Wilson, this is a no-splash zone—"

"So you are the infamous Wade," Loki mused. Her heels clacked against the wooden floor as she strode forward, taking the small pleasure of startling the barman into smacking his hip into something as he jumped and cursed. Wade, though, had not moved a hair's breadth until he spun in his stool, the white eyes of his mask blank as they settled on her.

"That's one of my many deliciously applicable names," he greeted with a waggle of his fingers. "Feel free to wear it out, wash it on cold, hang it out to—" He leaned forward suddenly, tipping his chair— "wait one diddly-dang second! Almost-Katie-McGrath?!"

"Who also seems to be full of inane comments, though I suppose I had no other background to sustain your preconceived image. Save for your penchant for violence and foolhardiness," Loki commented dryly. Sharp green eyes flashed over to the other man in the room, who gulped. "Weasel."

"Um." He swallowed and edged slightly to the side. "I-I don't think I ever got your, uh, name?"

"Lora Olstad, but Olstad should suffice enough for your tongue," she said, then turned her gaze at the humming of some misaligned tune. "I assume Peter is finishing up his duties?"

"Ye-Yeah, he's in the... back..."

"So you're really here for sweetie Petey-Pie, huh? He's a growing boy, you know, even if he's super short. I wonder if it's cause he drank 1% instead of 2%, and you know what they say about that 1%. They cripple this society and we should bust out the guillotines and eat the rich," Wade went on in that flippant way as the Weasel shrunk further away from the two of them. It was this sort of flippancy embodied by either an unsalvageable moron or someone that very well believed they could hold their own against the likes of herself. Ridiculous, truly, and though it would be in her better interest to put him in his place before his head swelled, she was only moments away from seeing her darling again. What damage could be done humoring this fool, even for a little while? "But if you're going to eat the rich you're gonna have to at least marinate them overnight. I bet they're chewy and bland and full of ick, if you Tokyo my Drift."

She cocked a brow. "I will admit that I am unsure whether or not this," she gestured to the general air of him, "is genuine, or an act. If it is the latter, then I will admit my surprise."

"Don't insult me," he huffed. "This? All of this?" He gestured circles around his chest. "This is 100% Certified Angus Shithead, my suit-dressed associate, and you can trust me on that."

"Trust?" Loki repeated. She laughed, drew forward, and plucked the half-empty mug of ale and inspected it as she swirled it under the light. "You lot favor that saying 'I trust you as far as I can throw you,' though imagine how disappointed I came to be when I found my ability to throw you all around much, much further than I can even begin to trust you."

"Yeah?" Wade crossed one leg over the other and dropped his chin into his waiting hands, the picture of a bumbling idiot. "And how far is that?"

Loki smiled.

::

"— !"

Peter smashed the 'end call' button about ten times more than necessary as he rushed over to the bar where Weasel was standing half in fear and half in indignation over having to get a whole other pool table.

"What happ—"

"Is this genetic?" Weasel asked as he cowered beside the Gold Card machine. "It's gotta be genetic, right? Except you're a legitimate cinnamon roll and she's fucking Little Caesars CRAZY BREAD—"

"Uh—"

His boss pointed a shaking finger out toward the rest of the floor and, consequently, at Wade in a puddle of askew limbs and shattered wooden chips. Some fallen billiard balls made dents in the floor and rolled underneath a bunch of tables. "—but you BOTH managed to break the bar!"

Peter glanced at the off-brown wood planks he used to patch up that Wade-shaped hole in the floor that was definitely his fault and also definitely warranted.

"Um, I can try to fix the pool table too?" he offered weakly.

"Peter," he hears, and he spun to meet Loki's smiling face. She was Lora today and that all black suit made her look like she should be the big boss in one of the largest buildings in the metro area. "A happy Christmas to you." She frowned and grasped his chin to tilt his head this way and that. "Norns, what has become of your face?"

Loki shot a frosty glare Weasel's direction as if the injuries were somehow his fault and honestly, the guy got way too much crap way too often and Peter was quick to jump to his boss' defense, even as the man slowly shuffled back and tried to disappear between the liquor bottles on the back shelves.

"I-I got into a fight before I came into work today!" the teen exclaimed, his insides fluttering in relief when her attention turned back to him and that intense spark slipped out of her green, green eyes. She raised a brow. "Seriously! These dudes were super beefy and decided to pick on the nerdy kid walking down the street, but it's cool. I took care of it."

He absolutely wasn't going to check if his boss was looking at him with judgy eyes, but he hoped no one was going to bring up a certain web-shooting vigilante in front of his mom. And it wasn't like he was trying to keep it a secret, it just... never came up?

"Really?"

"Yeah. I can totally hold my own, but Wade's been teaching me better techniques."

The red lump on the floor sat up in one smooth motion and pressed his clasped hands to his face. "And you're doing so well I'm gonna put so many stickers on your report card!"

"I have my doubts that this incorrigible buffoon is capable of teaching anything to anyone," she stated blandly without a single glance in the merc's direction, "but, you won your bout?"

"Oh, uh, yeah."

"Excellent." Loki retracted her hand after a moment's hesitation and clasped it behind her back. Weasel was still as far away from the chaos as he could manage and Wade started flicking green felt and splinters off his suit. "Are you ready to depart?"

Peter blinked. Right. The end of his shift. "Su-Sure! But..." He rubbed the back of his head and looked down, tapping a stray cue ball with the toe of his boot. "I'm probably going to stay a bit longer and help clean up."

"You know it's Christmas, right?" Weasel asked. He'd popped open the register to start poking through the night's earnings, but still maintained a healthy distance away from Loki and an even healthier distance away from what used to be the pool table. "Anyone that shows up later tonight can deal with the mess and shit and you've got the day off, no buts."

"Ha! He said butts."

"Are you sure?" Peter frowned. "I don't have any classes and I planned on coming in the rest of the week anyway."

"Well if you're gonna be adamant on actually coming in this week, I'm definitely forcing your Barney and Friends ass to stay home. I mean it—I'll even make sure Sal doesn't let you step a single foot in her kitchen, and you know damn well she's got a mean ladle," he said. He made the mistake of looking at Loki, gulped, and looked back. "Go hang out with your family today, kid. Sister Margaret's not goin' anywhere."

When Peter smiled it was blinding, and he made a quick run to the break room for his backpack, jacket, and the suit box before skidding back to the main space; Wade was carving something into one of the bigger pieces of felt with his bowie knife, because of course he was, and the more Peter thought about it the more he was convinced the night could have played out way worse.

He could've been mopping up blood spots again. Or gross-er, Deadpool guts.

"Bye, Mr. Weasel! Bye, Wade! Merry Christmas, and thanks for the gift!" he called out as he and Loki took their leave.

"Merry Christmas, Wonder-Boy. Have fun with your mom," Weasel returned with a lazy wave.

Wade thunked his bowie blade first into the floor beside him and unfolded the snowflake of geometrical dicks he just made. "Bye, Petey! Bye, Almost-Katie-McGrath-Who-I-Should-Start-Calling-Olstad! Merry Chr—" He whipped his head to the side. "Mom? MOM?!"

::

"Any future endeavor that I am cursed to tolerate that dimwit's presence would be a moment far too soon," Loki drawled as they strode through the snow-laden morning. A thin, icy sheet of snow layered the sidewalk and Peter admitted he had to cheat to keep himself from slipping. After last time, which came for him out of nowhere and started the line of dominoes that ended with a really jacked up ancestry-dot-com surprise, he couldn't really afford eating asphalt and catching himself on something cold so that someone could see him turn blue. But his mom didn't seem like she was having any problem on any ice patch with those scary tall heels. He guessed otherworldly entities had amazing balance?

"That's what half the people that meet him think, but he's a good guy," he told her. He tipped his head. "Er, mostly. Kinda. At least when we hang out? He's my friend though—him, Neena, Ms. Granny, and Mr. Weasel."

Was it weird that now the majority of his friends were old enough to be his parents?

"In that case, and only that case, I will refrain myself from exacting extreme bodily harm." There's a sort of humor in the quirk of her blood red lips, and with her long black hair slightly curled and spilling over one shoulder, she was a picture of promise and threat. He couldn't help wondering how someone like him could have a mom as confident as her. Intimidating. Articulate.

He wondered if he could get her interested in science, like him.

She slowed to a stop about a block away from the bar and directed him to a short alleyway with a light guiding of his shoulder. Her eyes roved up the walls and all around them and his gaze followed—no cameras, no people.

Her grip tightened.

"Bend your knees," she said.

"Wh—"

In reality it lasted for one single second, but to him it felt close to one single lifetime the way the ground beneath him gave way and the world shifted in color and void and bright and dark all under a haze of glowing green before his feet were back on something stable and the frosty air resumed its fanning against his skin.

Peter immediately squatted down into a crouch and once he was at a reasonably low height, fell back to sit with his legs kicked out and both arms outstretched like he was bracing himself against nothing.

"Th-That was... was a lot," he muttered faintly as Loki immediately knelt down beside him. "Oh man, that was a lot. What was that?" He turned his head, his gaze landing on the tops of street lamps and roof ledges covered in snow sheen. "And where are we?!"

"The roof of your apartment complex. I had... believed it best to return you home as quickly as possible, as it is very late and the weather conditions are not at their best." She grimaced and pressed a cool hand against his forehead, so cool in fact she refused to process that both her palm and the skin she touched were beginning to darken to the exact same shade of winter. Careless, careless, careless—what had she been thinking? He was still part human and she didn't know the extent of what magicks he could and couldn't handle. "I—As you are my child, I did not believe that you would have such an adverse reaction to my seidr. I am truly sorry, I... I did not account for this egregious oversight that inflicted this on you—"

Peter's hands reached up to grab hers and saw her eyes steeped in a panic and fear she tried hard to reign in. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, it's not your fault. It's uh, it's just a thing that happens with me sometimes," he explained. "Every once in a while my senses get really sensitive, like, lights get too bright, sounds get too loud, things like that. The teleporting thing just caught me off-guard." He offered her a genuine smile though the edges of his vision were still a little bit woozy. "Also, teleportation? That's so awesome."

Loki exhaled softly and took a seat beside him. "Still, my deepest, most genuine apologies. I will not let it happen again."

"It's okay!"

It wasn't, but she didn't think he'd let her speak on it for longer.

"Also, I was going to lead up to this on our walk back, but since we're already here..." He swung his backpack into his lap and right on top of the suit box and dug for two things, one small-ish box wrapped in red and green polka dots, and one clear bag holding star-shaped maroon brownies. "You probably don't celebrate Christmas, but I hope you don't mind that I got you gifts anyway!"

Blankly she took the gifts, each easily cradled in each hand. Gifts on Asgard were never so novelly wrapped. Should she be given books or swords or garments cut from the finest cloth, she had always been handed straight to her by Frigga or Odin or left in her rooms by the near hundred servants employed in the palace.

She took a strand of ribbon between the pads of her fingers and tugged it lightly to smooth it out.

"You should open it. I mean, if that's okay. And the baggie of brownies are red velvet flavored; I thought about adding marshmallow topping but it would've just smeared on the cellophane, and then I thought about adding peanuts, but you could be allergic or maybe you wouldn't like them much."

Peter bit his bottom lip as Loki lowered the brownies onto her lap and unstuck the tape on both ends of the polka dot box. Methodical fingers straightened the paper and slipped the plain box out of its confines, and when the top popped open, there on a bed of crinkled silver tissue paper was... what looked to be a device. Slim, orange, a screen that took up the top half and a white donut shape on the bottom half.

"I didn't really know what to get you and the brownies were more of a side thing, so I loaded up my old iPod Nano with a bunch of songs I thought you'd like. Maybe you've already got a music preference, but I made sure to put in a wide variety. Alternative, indie, folk, pop, rock, classical, piano, violin..." he listed off with bright eyes and an almost nervous energy.

Her heart melted just so. It always seemed to, for him.

"I have not taken the chance to explore Midgardian music much. Truthfully, I would not have known where to begin should I have tried," she admitted, and smiled down at his hopeful face. "Thank you."

He grinned and scooted close enough for their arms to touch. "Let me teach you how to use it!"

Loki had intended to bring her boy back home as quickly as possible to keep him out of the night as much as she could. That bar was nowhere near the first ten pages of a list of places she preferred him to frequent with his time, but it was still his life and he was happy and he was old enough to know right from wrong despite her own opinions of his youth. She couldn't tell him what to do—she had no right—and as loathe as she was to admit, Weasel and the Wade treated him kindly. Fairly. That was all she could ever ask of them.

She didn't count the time that passed, but they stayed for a while on that rooftop sprinkled with snow, huddled together with one bud in her ear and the other in his.

::

Peter went to bed around sunrise, woke up around noon, and was distinctly aware of three things.

One, it was Christmas, so, nice.

Two, he was going to make May the best Christmas dinner she ever had which was going to include a whole oven-roasted chicken, four-cheese manicotti, and gingerbread men so amazing that Lord Farquaad was going to steal their little gumdrop buttons.

Three, there was a dagger on his nightstand.

The blade was oddly shaped with a sharp-angled transition between the back section and the point, a pit of snakes engraved and slithering all along the metal. Polished, pitch black wood wound the hilt and a thick band of gold circled around its middle.

A translucent green ribbon of wispy magic sat on the cross-guard.

Your baking skills are impeccable.

The note with it read.

Have a Merry Christmas, Peter.

::

"Is—I—Do I really have to learn how to use a dagger—"

"But of course. With what else would you stab your enemies?"

"I'm not going to stab anyone!"

"Shame. You would be good at it, with that innocent look about you. Many would lower their guard just enough for you to drive your blade straight through one's—"

"Mr. Lok-Loren," Peter whined. Loki laughed and watched the boy dig into his pad thai with pink cheeks and a pout. it was a slower day out on the streets on the 26th, and the two of them had opted to take lunch at a Thai place near the Historical Society during Loki's break. And it had to be Thai food, according to Peter, because what do you mean you've never tried Thai? How long have you been on Earth? A couple months?! Okay, so we're going to get Thai like right now and then you have to try Chinese, pizza, pho, hotdogs, Mr. Delmar's...

"Surely you would like a means to defend yourself," he says after finishing the last few bites of his own pad see ew. Truly, there was something so delicious and intriguing about the endless variety of Midgardian cuisine. "Is that Wade teaching you to fight with weapons?

"Uh, not really. We focus on hand to hand at the gym." And Neena's teaching me how to shoot guns, but that's probably not worth mentioning, right?

"It is imperative for your young mind to learn to wield at least one melee weapon. A dagger is very versatile and can be hidden on your person in various ways."

"What about a sword?"

"Harder to carry unless it can be concealed by seidr or kept in an accessible pocket dimension. Thus, dagger. For convenience."

"Wade's got two swords."

"And how well would you say that fool's covertness is when wielding such?"

"... Yeah, that's fair."

Loki, dressed in a neatly pressed charcoal suit and hunter green turtleneck, looked almost comical as he expounded upon every single reason why his science-pun shirt, flannel wearing teenager should even have a dagger on his calf in this current moment.

"An adversary could be around any corner at any time, any day," he continued as they stepped out of the restaurant. He adjusted the glasses on the bridge of his nose. "You will never know if they will make an attempt on your life until direct confrontation, which by then would be too late. Preparation is always key."

"Right," Peter agreed. A faint tinglein the back of his head had him looking down at the circle of orange sparks that started to spin to life around his mom's feet. "Um, does that have to do with dagger too, or...?"

Loki followed his gaze, then tensed. "This isn't me."

Peter tripped back when the god fell through the sidewalk and the sparks disappeared as quickly as they came, leaving the ground as solid and whole as any regular sidewalk was expected to be.

The only thing amiss in the aftermath was the plain slip of parchment lying innocently in the snow where Loki once was, one short address elegantly penned in the center.

177A Bleecker St.